Prior work on homogeneous catalysts for the metathesis of acetylenes is relatively sparse. The first published report on this subject appears to be that of Mortreaux, et al., J. Mol. Catal., 1977, 2, 73. Their work involved use of Mo(CO).sub.6. Devarajan, et al. improved upon and studied this system in some detail. See J. Organomet. Chem., 1979, 181, 99. Most of the more recent work in the field is that of R. R. Schrock and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who have studied certain compounds or complexes of molybdenum and tungsten.
See for example:
Clark et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1978, 100, 6774 PA2 Wengrovius et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1981, 103, 3932 PA2 Sancho et al., J. Mol. Catal. 1982, 15, 75 PA2 Schrock et al., Organometallics 1982, 1, 1645 PA2 McCullough et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1984, 106, 4067 PA2 Schrock, U.S. Pat. No. 4,427,595 (1984)
In addition, a catalyst based on MoO.sub.2 (acac).sub.2 has been reported by Bencheick et al., J. Mol. Catal. 1982, 15, 93.
It appears that all of the homogeneous catalysts studied to date have involved compounds having a single atom of Mo or W.
Lamotte et al., Cryst. Struct. Comm., 1981, 10, 59, report the structure of a bimetallic complex of dimolybdenum tetraacetate and aluminum triisopropoxide. However no utility of any kind is suggested for the complex.